Another and perhaps less obvious manifestation of numeric patterns in a religious context is their use in liturgies, prayers, and magical utterances. This type of numeric pattern may take the form of a set number of prayers to be recited each day, as in Judaism's seven and Islam's five daily prayers, or in the number of times a particular prayer is to be uttered, as in the kyrie eleison or the rosary of the Roman Catholic tradition. In popular late antique religious traditions the use of numbers was somewhat more explicit, especially in the so-called "magical" texts.

Manichaeans can be seen to have been interested in the numerical quantification of time and in the conscientious recording of important dates in their history, especially those relating to the founder. This effort, it seems, was carried into most of their missionary efforts. To be sure, some dates, such as those of Mani's first revelations might be literary or hagiographie inventions, but when it cornes to the duration of his imprisonment and the timing of his exécution the degree of detail recorded by Manichaean tradition might fîll many New Testament scholars with envy.

This first part of the discourse is expressed using a series of five-fold structures that progressively integrate each part of the argument while consistently enumerating the five thematic elements in canonical order. The repetition of five is meant to express the fondamental interconnectedness of ail facets of Maniehaean teaching and to reflect the quasi-scientific allure of Maniehaean doctrines in Late Antiquity. The Elect, to whom this discourse is addressed, would have had no difficulty in accepting the Maniehaean logic of this vivid cosmological narrative.